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Excited to have a new Arts, Music, and Poetry Column in the Blogazine with my friends over at .��

Here are a few of my articles:

Some of my thoughts on the new Netflix documentary The Evolution of Hip-Hop. .

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One of the best tracks off of The Roots new album has an excellent insight on what a strip joint is actually selling.��.

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Why are stories like Guardians of the Galaxy important? And why are there so many of them lately? I take a shot at where Plato, Maximus the Confessor, Chaucer, and Rocket the Raccoon come together in .

Check out my newest book, Waiting Through Winter. It is a Children's book about animals preparing for winter. Illustrated by the uber-talented and illustrious ��in beautiful ink and watercolor.

First off, thanks for joining us at The Westminster Confession of Funk. Congratulations on your new album The Nature of Us. It is seriously high quality stuff.

Thanks for having me.

This album started as a Kickstarter campaign. What is it like to hit go on the campaign and end up here with an amazing album that, last I checked, was #9 on the singer/songwriter charts on iTunes?

It's not an experience I can easily wrap my head around. I still feel incredibly blessed by this entire opportunity.��To have so many people get behind me and believe in the vision for this album was so encouraging and motivating. Now that the record is released, I'm feeling a bit of fatigue, but mostly relief and a whole lot of excitement. I had my doubts along the way but it's an enormous relief to release something after putting so much time and hard work into it; and I think the excitement of watching the songs take on a life of their own is one of the best rewards of making music. So, so thankful for this last year.��

I find the title of your album really intriguing. What's it about?

I came up with the title after the album was finished actually. I wrote down all the lyrics and circled words that repeat; tried to identify all the themes that come and go throughout the record. Vision is a strong thread but nature itself is even stronger with songs like "Turn to Gold", "My Heart Is Set", "Give Our Hearts Some Weight", and "Tragedy Is Not the End" all containing some sort of Nature metaphor in the lyrics. Then I saw that all of the songs have this thread of wanting to know who we are; they all have this underlying sort of hunger to know where we came from, and where we're going.�� All the songs present a sort of different layer of an answer those questions; and the double meaning of the word "Nature" tied it all together for me, hence "The Nature of Us."

Music is such a fundamentally human endeavor. What have you learned about humanity making music?

Amazing question. I could talk about this for a long while. To sum up, I've learned that humanity is blessed to have music in the world. I've learned that we are hungry for mystery and drawn to beauty. I've learned that we are made to worship. I love that C.S. Lewis quote that says "you don't have a soul, you are a soul." Music helps remind me of that everyday. ��

What do you hope people walk away with after hearing your music?

So many things, haha. I don't want to speak too much about it because I do cherish the moments when a listener gets something out of a song that I never intended; a couple T.S. Eliot lines come to mind though. I hope people hear the voice of the hidden waterfall and see the boy hidden in the apple tree, not known because not looked for. I hope people walk away looking for those things, looking for the world that ought to be. I hope they would leave a show hungry for something greater. I hope people remember what it's like to be home, and are moved to get back to that place. ����

And what are your plans now? What do you have coming up?

My wife and I are having our first baby coming up in February (hip! hip! HURRAH!) so I am working on a little Lullabies EP now. I'm also starting to write with a friend from college ��and I can't wait to see what emerges from that project. But after this baby comes, we'll be hoping to go on tour in the spring to support this new record, and who knows what will happen from there!��

Thanks for joining us here at The Westminster Confession of Funk. Let us know when you go on tour so that we can get the word out. And thank you for The Nature of Us. It has been a joy to listen to.��

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Every once in a while you hit a movie that is just plain beautiful. I mean, real life beautiful. The story is wonderful, the characters and acting are wonderful, and it moves you to want to do what you were made to do. Chef (written, produced, directed by and starring Jon Favreau) is the story of a successful chef that loves cooking because of the art and the human connection. Because of his selfishness he has lost the artistic vision that he once had. And he has lost sight of everything that is important to him. His visionless existence has dehumanized him. He is divorced, he is becoming a shlump of a father who makes promises that he doesn’t keep, and he is making passionless food.

Quick warning, Chef is rated R for language. And it goes over the top to earn that R rating. There is a bit of vulgarity and sensuality, but the rating is really about the triple digit use of the F-bomb. Consider yourself warned. With that out of the way, Chef is an excellent story, superbly told.

One of the great aspects of the storytelling in Chef is that, though when the story begins he is not a very good guy, Carl Caspar (Jon Favreau) is a guy that you root for, because you can tell that he once was a great guy. His best friend works for him and would do anything for him. His son wants to be with him. Even his ex-wife still likes him and wants him to succeed. It is obvious from the beginning that he is a good guy who has lost his way. Everyone is on his side but his boss and, seemingly, himself. He has traded in a calling for a job. He has traded in his desire to touch and connect with people with the hospitality of lovingly prepared food.

Because food is mystical. Food is magical. Food is mysterious. When you carefully and enthusiastically feed people something that you love, you are giving them a part of yourself. Food is art that can become a point of contact, a point of fellowship and communion between two humanities. Food is a deep and abiding mystery. It is not reducible to the scientifically observable. A bottle of wine and a homemade meal shared with joy and laughter is one of the places where we are at our most human.

Caspar is a chef that has experienced that, and with his friends and family, but he has lost it in the restaurant where he is the head chef. And when he gets a bad review and his confrontation of the reviewer and subsequent mental breakdown in his restaurant accidentally ends up a viral video he finds himself jobless.

And this is where the movie gets amazing. Because Carl Caspar’s problems begin to come to light. He has been blaming the reviewer and the restaurant owner and his own misunderstanding of twitter and anyone but himself. But the real problem that his food has quit connecting with people is that he has been a terrible father and a terrible husband. Because he was unable to connect with the people closest to him he has lost his ability to bless people through food.

And that is where the story kicks into radness squared mode. Because Carl is given a food truck and he begins to get a vision of returning to his first love of Cuban food. And his son jumps into help. But when his son Percy (Emjay Anthony) refuses to clean something, Carl responds terribly. And the lights come on and he repents to his son. And In his repentance knew life is born between him and his son. The simple confession and acknowledgment of the obvious reality of his sin to his son opens the way of wisdom. The mystery of the way of success for Carl as a human being begins to unravel in front of him. It was hidden to him all of this time. We could see it, but the scales did not fall off his eyes until he humbles himself before his own son. And as he begins to open himself to his son and win his son to his side, and as he begins to truly treat his own son as his son, passing his knowledge of the mysticality of food onto his son the world opens back up to him.

He rediscovers what food is and what it can do, he reconnects with the world again, by teaching his son how to love people in the meticulous care of the food that you are putting onto their plate and the wisdom that is hidden in his son, in this case his knowledge about social media, is all added to his efforts because his son begins to work with him. And his lack of knowledge about social media is exactly what revealed his clownish foolishness to the world. So the only way for him to succeed in the world was to win his son to him. He finally makes it when he is too busy enjoying his son and passing on the things that he loves to worry about making it.

And the music is startlingly marvelous. Marvin Gaye, New Orleans marching band style:��straight flippin�� amazing! (Can I write that? I’m not sure. But it is, so I will). Seeing the truck crew singing and cooking and cleaning together was one of the best scenes in the movie. The way that they become a little traveling community taking joy in the work of serving people by feeding them was magnificent. One of those touching moments that reminds you that you are glad to be alive and a human being, because being a human that is loving and enjoying and blessing other human beings is a first-rate thing.

And that is what Chef is about. A man with a gift for food that has forgotten how to care about the people around him and therefore has lost his soul. Any soul centered on itself shrivels. But when Carl remembers to love and serve and bless the people around him, when he remembers to consider others as more important than himself, he rediscovers the joy of his humanity.

My newest book is a collection of poetry entitled "No One Doubts a Belly Laugh," and it is out today. Couple of comments from reviewers that have rolled in so far.

"Jason Farley's poetry serves up center-cut, double-thick slices of verbal bacon, sizzled in a hot cast iron pan: it crackles and pops with all the depth and flavor of life."��
Joe Carlson,��author of 'The Lay of Creation' and 'The Whirlwind Bides His Time.'��

"As someone who reads poetry on the hunt for great lines, I welcome this collection from Jason Farley. There are some great lines here. The poems are good too." ��
Douglas Wilson,��author of 'Beowulf: A New Verse Translation' and 'Untune the Sky.'

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(From the preface to 'In Pursuit of Kindness,' which is now available at , , or through��.

I am not naturally a kind person. I am tempted constantly and consistently to cynicism. In fact, when I walked myself through the doors of a church, I had spent the previous night watching Saturday Night Live and listening to the eminently misanthropic joke punk band The Dead Milkmen. One of my favorite songs was ‘If You Love Someone Set Them on Fire.�� And that was pretty much my take on kindness when I first showed up at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Spokane.��

But God, who is rich in mercy, has led me like a rail-riding hobo in pursuit of kindness. I was suspicious of any kindness, convinced that there always had to be a self-serving agenda. But God has been patient with me because, quite frankly, he is kind.��
And, for me, this has probably been the most surprising thing about God. I did not expect it. I was not looking for a kind God. It had never occurred to me that kindness was particularly important. It never seemed like the something that would be attached to divinity.��
I was convinced that the truth about life, God, and the world would be like medicine. It would taste bad but be good for you. And any sweetness was, at best, an illusion, and at worst a downright lie.

But I kept running up against the fact that, in the history of God’s people, the lovingkindness of God has been the defining feature of our story. I found myself to have been grafted into a history wherein God was surprisingly kind. At least it was surprising to me. This book is me coming to terms with God’s kindness, what it means to follow a kind God, and what it means to be in pursuit of kindness.

From the Preface to 'In Pursuit of Kindness.��To read more, check out the book .

The historic Church has sought to place memorials of Jesus everywhere. This is a right desire (Deut. 6:5-9)��and the calendar did not escape the zeal to memorialize. But because what we are looking to memorialize is a whole story, the memorial feasts of the church calendar have themselves formed into a story.

Advent celebrates the longing that God built into the world before Christ. It leads to the celebration of the fulfillment of the longing of the Jews as we celebrate the incarnation of Jesus with the twelve days of Christmas. Though God has drawn near throughout our history, God’s people had always been barred from the inner life of God. But the Son of God became a man and opened up direct fellowship with God. In his flesh he��became��the door to that life.

God has always been the savior, but by taking on a body in order to dwell among us, Jesus became savior in a new way. He��brought��a salvation that was deeper, broader, higher, and longer in every way. So much so that all the salvations that God had wrought in the past turned out to have been shadows of what Jesus came to do in the flesh.

Epiphany is the first day after Christmas and is the celebration of the coming of the wise men to worship Jesus. As the first Gentiles come to worship Jesus, in them we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of the longing, not just of the Jews but of all off the peoples and nations of the world. Just as the gospel went first to the descendants of Abraham, and then to the Gentiles, we move from Christmas to Epiphany, but that is just the first act.

Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday together make up the next holiday, the cycle of Easter. The word “Easter�� is Anglo Saxon for spring equinox. Easter was calculated using the equinox, and the term for the equinox (Oestra), according to the church historian Bede, gave its name to the Feast of the Resurrection. (Incidentally, the nation of Austria is also named after the spring equinox.)

We used to worship a goddess that was said to be the power behind the equinox, but she has been forgotten.��And the heavens, which shout the praises of God, have come to be recognized and understood for what they have actually been saying all along. The word ‘Easter’��has been cleansed as the gospel has triumphed. Easter is now the festival day in which we celebrate the fact that winter is not just overcome every year; the winter of the world was overcome when the true spring began. When the Son of God burst forth from the grave as he was raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit of God, the winter of the world was wrecked.

Adam and Eve cast the world into winter with our sin, but God soon began giving hints that the winter would be broken.��T.S. Elliot, in his poem ‘Little Gidding,�� calls these hints, “midwinter spring��, where a day with winter on each side is bright with the hint of a coming spring.

When the short day is brightest with frost and fire . . . stirs the dumb spirit, not with wind, but with pentecostal fire.

All throughout the Old Testament there are midwinter spring days, where spring itself does not come, but God makes it clear that the spring is coming. Resurrection is coming. History itself will have a spring equinox, when history turns from winter to spring.

This is why we call��feast of the resurrection��Easter. This is why we named it after Spring. The true meaning of Spring, the actual reason that God set up the cycle of the equinoxes and seasons, is that God is a God who brings life from death. So everything in��spring is a legitimate symbol to be used in our celebration of the resurrection. Be it eggs, rabbits, flowers, dressing the children in new outfits, or seeing the ladies in beautiful spring clothes, it is all a wonderful and legitimate way of celebrating the resurrection. Because when Jesus came back from the dead��the world's winter��was broken and the spring came.

Jesus' resurrection is the turning point in history that then��leads to the revolution of the ascension. Forty days after the resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9). Ascension Thursday is the day that the church has traditionally set aside to celebrate that��installation of Jesus. At the ascension, Jesus��was anointed as King of kings and Lord of lords. Then he took the throne��at the right hand of God the Father.

It was a revolution because every authority in the pre-Ascension world was unseated by the work of Jesus. "And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (Col 2:15). After the resurrection all authority on heaven and on earth was given to Jesus (Matt. 28:18). When Jesus "was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God" (Mark 16:19), the revolution was accomplished, complete, and finished as Jesus was installed as the ruler of all.

Daniel recieves a vision of the day when��the Son of Adam would come to heaven. He gives us a view at the other end of the journey of Jesus' ascension. The Apostles saw him leave for heaven.��Daniel is given a vision of Jesus arriving in heaven. "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (Dan 7:13-14). In the ascension, the authority of mankind, the authority that was forfeited when Adam sinned, was restored to Mankind in the second Adam.

But that restoration does not just remain with Jesus. Ten days later, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit of God was poured out on the church and the final restoration of humanity in and through the church began. The Church is the body of Christ, and when the Spirit was poured on Jesus, as he was anointed the King of kings and the Perfect High Priest of the heavenly tabernacle, the Spirit flowed down his head, down his beard, and onto his body (Ps.��133). When Jesus is anointed King he gives gifts to��his people��(Eph. 4:8). But the first gift that he gave��was himself in the gift of his Spirit. Hence the name ‘Spiritual�� Gifts (1 Cor. 12:1). And through these gifts, the restoration and perfecting of his people (that will continue into eternity) both��begins and is guaranteed by the giving of the Spirit.

Next we come to Halloween and All Saints Day. Halloween was not, and has never been, a pagan holiday. The Christian calendar, because of the Hebrew influence, has always begun its celebration on what the Romans considered to be the day before. The first days went from evening to morning (see Gen. 1), but the Romans reckoned their days from midnight to midnight. Out of Hebrew habit, the feast day celebrations began the evening before the day of celebration. Because much of the calendrical reckoning was done with Roman calendars, it felt as if the celebrations were beginning a day early.

What this says about the different views of history is a fun question, but for now, what is important is that is how the party on the eve of a celebration came to find itself on the calendar as its own event with its own traditions and activities. The word 'Halloween' is��the contraction of All Hallows' Eve. All Hallows' (or All Saint's) is the celebration of the work of God through the church. It is the day when we make the devil-crushing feet of the Body of Christ dance at the honor and the joy of serpent crushing��(Rom. 16:20).

All Saints' is the final hurrah of the church calendar after which we return��again��to��Advent.��Longing��remembered��becomes��longing��fulfilled. And so we continue the celebration.

This longing also becomes a reminder that all of our longing and all of our love for God will find it's fulfillment in the return of Christ, the second advent. When Jesus comes again��bringing��the final resurrection of the body, followed by the judgment of Christ and an eternity of life with God for the just and eternal death for those outside of Christ, we find the ultimate fulfillment of all of history.

This is why there are no old world pagan holidays left on the calendar handed down to us from Christendom. There have been a handful of romantic poets and secularists that have wanted to keep the holidays while jettisoning Jesus, but they have had to make things up and grasp at straws. The pagan calendars have all been forgotten along with their gods. The closest that we get is May Day, but no one even remembers who Maia was, let alone how her day was celebrated in the past.

There are still a handful of names that have remained on the calendar from ancient pagan times. Each of the seven names of the days of the week are derived from the Roman and Norse names of the gods of the seven visible planets, (Sun's Day, Moon's Day, Tiu's Day, Woden's Day, Thor's Day, Freya's Day, Saturn's Day), but the way back to worship those gods, or to the worship of the hosts of heaven at all, has been forever blocked and dammed by the resurrection of Jesus.

Now the planets are in the right hand of Jesus (Rev. 1:16). The seven spirits represented by the seven candlesticks of the temple turned out to be but a shadow��of the seven spirits of the seven planets as they danced in light and glory before the Holy of Holies built without hands (Rev. 1:4, 12-13; Heb. 9:1-3, 23-24). The principalities of the planets were created to lead us into the presence of God. Though in the new covenant that job has been taken over by the church (Eph. 3:10), there is no reason to object to the use of the names of these forgotten gods, if only to remember that they have been forgotten. Having been overshadowed by the brightness of the glory of a crucified and risen Christ, each day is a reminder that all time is in the hands of Jesus.

So as we seek to recover and reinvigorate the church calendar, we should remember that the calendar is not merely a reminder to engage in some extra religious activities. We are remembering what Christ has done and is doing in history. And the remembering causes us to celebrate. The church calendar is to remind us of the great works of God on our behalf, and to mark out the time of our lives according to what God has done in Christ. The primary purpose of the church calendar is to give a rhythm and vocabulary to our joy, freedom, and hope.

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? B y taking heed thereto according to thy word (Ps. 119:9).

Here we begin the second stanza of��the longest psalm in the Book of Psalms.��The first stanza of Psalm 119 was all about how God's commands are a description of a��fruitful life. The law of God . Because we are made in the image of God, the life that we are intended to live is shaped like the life that God lives.��The conclusion of ��is that the first blessing that we need is the blessing of God granting us��obedience to his law. All others blessings are meaningless unless we can follow after God. And the blessings of a fruitful life to the commandments of God.

But the psalmist also sees that there is a serious problem. He does not begin his obedience from neutral.��He has sinned. He is starting from a deficit.��All obedience that might come in the future is the obedience of��a sinner. He has been following a different path than the path of life. He has not lived God’s life after him the way one made in the image of God should have. God has cut and laid a road and told us to follow it, but as sinners we all begin from the woods.

How then does a young man cleanse his way? How does one return to the way once you have gotten off of it. How does a sinner find forgiveness? But not just forgiveness. How does a sinner find his way back to living the life that he, as someone made in the image of God, is created to live.

The answer is to take hold of God’s Word. Open up your ears and listen to God speak. God’s word cleanses us. That is why Jesus can say, ��Now you��are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.�� (John 15:3). God’s word created us, and with His word he recreates us. But God never��does anything part way. He does not merely cleanse us from our past sins. He��cleanses us of past sins and cleanses us for��a future of fruitfulness.

This young psalmist wants the way that he lives cleansed. Remember, the psalmist wanted his way directed after God’s laws (Ps. 119:5) because God’s laws were a description of God’s own way of living (119:3). And the Word of God will direct and transform and cleanse us back into the way of living that imitates the life of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

That is why Jesus continues from cleansing by the word to fruitfulness by the word. ��Now you��are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can you, except you��abide in me. I am the vine, you��are the branches: He that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings��forth much fruit: for without me you��can do nothing�� (John 15:3��5).

Living in the way of God is something that begins with the cleansing of the Word of God, and continues��with the ongoing cleansing of our living with the Word of God.

And Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. So the Psalmist, by taking heed of the Word of God was, like Abraham, justified by faith (Gen. 15:6). And then��walked by faith, trusting in the same word in which he found his justification. In the Word of promise, he saw Jesus. Jesus�� cleansing death was promised, and the way of life was laid out in the law. The life that Jesus would come and��live to perfect fulfillment (Matt. 5:17)��because God has always and eternally been living it.

We begin by faith in Jesus, revealed to us in God’s Word, by the Spirit of God, and we continue by faith in Jesus, revealed to us in God’s Word, by the Spirit of God. How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed unto God’s Word.

Margaret Sanger started the back-alley abortion clinic which grew into the largest and most profitable non-profit organization in the world. She has been hailed as a great social reformer, a liberator, and a��hero. She lives in the minds of many as one of the great��saints of secularism. But the problem is, she was a white supremacist who wanted to use��the power of the state to legally cleanse the land of non-whites.

In 1932, Sanger outlined and published her “Plan for peace,�� that called for forced sterilization, legislated segregation, and concentration camps for all “dysgenic stocks.”��Her close friend and adviser, Ernst Rudin, who served as Hitler’s director of genetic sterilization in Germany, was published, and praised by Sanger in the Planned Parenthood magazine.

Sanger’s ideology was not like Hitler’s. Her ideology was Hitler's. What is odd is that Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini have all been defamed and disavowed by every corner of society. Whether it is for their bad science, dangerous ideals, or for being instrumental in the deaths of millions, they are villains of history. Yet Margaret Sanger's work has continued��under an identical ideology without opposition. People are not running out to resurrect the name of Hitler. Yet every year people try and re-paint Sanger as someone special and humane, someone with noble intentions.

“But what about all the good Planned Parenthood does?��I see that Sanger and her company, Planned Parenthood, were white supremacists who wanted to kill minorities, but Planned Parenthood also offers cancer screenings. Not everything they do is bad.�� True, Planned Parenthood does offer more than just abortions. Besides the racially motivated killing of babies they do offer certain other services. Some of them are even helpful. But the same can be said for Hitler’s Germany. They never just killed Jews. They had social programs. They had music, art, patriotism. The Nazis were refined. But refinement built on a foundation of human sacrifice is still barbaric.��

Because people have been willing to overlook Margaret Sanger’s ideology, her white supremacist vision for the world is succeeding before our very eyes. Her allies of World War II were defamed by the details of Auschwitz. Yet her organization has been able to target and destroy 30% of the African American population. She has succeeded where Hitler failed.

To this day Margaret Sanger’s vision lives on in the institution that is living her legacy. With governmental and social support, eugenics by abortion continues to press forward in America and throughout the world. May the church stand up to defend the fatherless and defenseless in our land. Margaret Sanger and her institution have proved themselves enemies of the unprotected minorities that are my neighbor, and therefore are my enemies as well.��

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